Mie University Raymond Hall

One Hall, a Registered Tangible Cultural Property since 2003

Mie University Raymond Hall (三重大学レーモンドホール, Mie Daigaku Raymond Hall) stands at 1515 Kamihama-cho, Tsu City, Mie Prefecture, a Showa-period building entered on the register of tangible cultural properties on 18 March 2003. It is a registered property rather than a designated one.

The quantity is one building. The owner is the university.

The structure is timber, single-storeyed, roofed in sheet iron, with a floor area of 230 square metres. The date field reads mid Showa and the year field 1951.

Named After the Architect

The name of the property carries the name of the man who designed it.

The Agency records it as a single-storeyed timber building designed by Antonin Raymond.

Raymond in the name is that architect. Not the use of the building, nor where it stands, but its designer gives it its name.

At Shotokukan and at Takanawaso, the men who commissioned the buildings appear in the record, but the names are those of the properties.

At the Kubiki Railway locomotive shed, the present use stands in brackets after the name. That is a use.

Here the architect's name is the building's name. The Agency closes likewise that it is a fine example of Raymond's manner in timber, naming a style after a man.

Built as a Library

The name it carries now is not the use it was built for.

The Agency records that it was built as the library of the prefectural university.

That university was later merged into the present one. A building raised as a library is now called a hall.

At the Kubiki Railway locomotive shed, the present use stands in brackets, so earlier and present uses sit side by side in the name.

Here no use appears in the name at all. Raymond Hall tells neither that it was a library nor what it serves as now.

Built in 1951, it has passed through the merging of the universities since.

A South Face of Glass, on a Frame of Round Timbers

How it opens and what its frame is made of are both set down.

The Agency records glazed doors across the front, giving an open south face, and a frame using round timbers, as its characteristics.

The whole south front is glazed. It is divided by joinery rather than walls, and the record calls it open.

The frame uses round timbers: poles left round rather than sawn square.

At the Kubiki Railway locomotive shed, the roof carries a king post truss, a Western frame of sawn members.

Here the timbers are round. Built as a library, it takes its light from the south.

Visiting

The hall stands at 1515 Kamihama-cho, Tsu City, Mie Prefecture, owned by the university.

It covers 230 square metres, timber and single-storeyed, roofed in sheet iron.

Sansuikaikan at the same university is registered as well: 1936, timber and 2-storeyed, built as an alumni hall for a higher agricultural school. It was registered in 2002, before this one.

The two come from different predecessor schools and now stand on the grounds of one university.

A university owns the building, so entry and viewing follow its own arrangements. Check before travelling.